Great Lakes Cities

[The North One]

Take those maps with grain of salt especially since Detroit proper was significantly under-counted by census last decade. I don't believe at all that most of Southwest lost people, especially when the Latino population grew.

Also the southwest part of downtown has very little housing, it's nearly all office but the map makes it look like it had this big drop, it had little to no change in units pre-2020. It would show a huge gain for this decade since there have been big residential conversions like the Free Press building. Which opened literally right after the official count.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

White people didn't want that. Developers wanted that.

both groups wanted it.

it's not an either/or.

Originally Posted by The North One

Take those maps with grain of salt especially since Detroit proper was significantly under-counted by census last decade.

yes, but all 5 of the cities shown have large black/latino populations, which the CB admitted were significantly undercounted last census (and i suspect every census), so that same caveat would apply to all of them.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Also, there have always been concerns over Census counts. NYC had a population increase in the 1960's, which some viewed as suspiocious when basically all the other older central cities showed population decline. Then the 1970's count was surprisingly low, then the 1980's count was surprisingly high. If you over- or under- count, the next official count can come up strange.

Yeah, I'm aware of the census count suspicions but 50-70 years later NYC's oscillating counts don't look as weird in context against those other cities. NYC is the only one of those big cold cities to have gone back to setting consistent new population peaks. Its regional neighbors in the northeast corridor are also on track to follow suit, establishing consistent population growth over the past few decades.

Chicago hasn't been able to consistently grow. Detroit has yet to grow since it fell into decline, which when combined with regional performance is a pretty huge tell that Detroit's decline is "design" driven.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Most of the fringe Metro Detroit sprawl is pretty dense.

In what world? lmfao fringe sprawl in the metro is literally the opposite of dense. It's borderline rural.

But this is the real sprawl in the growing parts of Metro Detroit. It's fairly dense, at least compared to older suburbia.

Cherry picking random subdivisions and apartments in center Novi doesn't prove what you're saying at all, and that isn't even fringe. Just zoom out to the map in those locations and you'll clearly see how sparse it is. Not sure why you're trying to push this nonsense.

Also high density auto-dependent sprawl is in no way a good thing. It's better to keep sprawl with the least amount of people possible.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

yes, but all 5 of the cities shown have large black/latino populations, which the CB admitted were significantly undercounted last census (and i suspect every census), so that same caveat would apply to all of them.

They were not under-counted to the extent Detroit was, so no.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by The North One

They were not under-counted to the extent Detroit was.

maybe. maybe not.

present some evidence.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

both groups wanted it.

it's not an either/or.

The white people theory doesn't explain why Detroit is still declining. Detroit squeezed out every bit of white flight out of that lemon decades ago. Suburbs are still being built. Nobody is begging for new subdivisions to be built in Canton, Novi, or Macomb Township other than developers and provincial county executives. If anything people have been loudly begging for them not to do it and being ignored.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

The white people theory doesn't explain why Detroit is still declining.

i wasn't talking about now, but rather 50 years ago.

the urban decline pattern these days is mostly now black flight.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Suburbs are still being built. Nobody is begging for new subdivisions to be built in Canton, Novi, or Macomb Township.

if people stopped buying homes in those new suburbs, then they would stop getting built.

enough people obviously still want them for their construction to continue.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

The white people theory doesn't explain why Detroit is still declining. Detroit squeezed out every bit of white flight out of that lemon decades ago. Suburbs are still being built. Nobody is begging for new subdivisions to be built in Canton, Novi, or Macomb Township other than developers and provincial county executives. If anything people have been loudly begging for them not to do it and being ignored.

White flight is done in Detroit proper, but it's absolutely not done in the suburbs. There's always going to be another tranche of racist suburbanites upset their neighborhood has gotten to be X% black who look to move somewhere further out and whiter.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by eschaton

White flight is done in Detroit proper, but it's absolutely not done in the suburbs. There's always going to be another tranche of racist suburbanites upset their neighborhood has gotten to be X% black who look to move somewhere further out and whiter.

If they really wanted to keep the Black people out they'd do what the Northeast and California did: freeze land development and drive up the price of houses. Detroit sprawl looks like it's designed to benefit the construction and demolition racket more than to protect racial divisions.

[benp]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

correct.

generally speaking, the post-war suburbia around great lakes cities isn't notably dense from a national perspective.

and just like everywhere else around the country, most of it is terrible from an urbanism perspective (stroads and stripmalls, huzzah!!!)

fortunately, most of them are old enough to have some legacy pre-war inner ring suburbia and older historic absorbed towns that don't suck.



anyway, moving on and getting back to great lakes cities, i'm curious to learn more about rochester. it's pretty close to the lake ontario shore, and the municipal limits of the city proper even have some fingers that stretch north to reach the shoreline, but downtown rochester has always been centered around the falls on the genesee river, about 7 miles up stream from the lake. the power of those falls was harnessed back in the day to turn rochester into the most important wheat processing mill city in the nation in the mid 19th century, and that growth in milling coincided with the opening of the erie canal such that all of that wheat could be shipped back east via the canal.

all this leads me to my question: does rochester have a history of being a significant lake port city back in the day as well? wikipedia doesn't say anything about it, and looking at google maps today, the mouth of the genesee river at lake ontario only shows a bunch of marinas for recreational boats. i can't seem to find any port facilities that a lake frieghter would be able to berth at to load/unlad cargo.

to me, one of the most defining aspects of a true "Great Lakes City" is to have a significant port for commercial shipping on the lakes*, and i'm wondering if rochester ever had that history, because it appears to be gone today.


(*) it's why I include cities like detroit/windsor and sault ste. marie as official "Great Lakes Cities" even though they aren't technically located on a great lake, but rather on one of the interconnecting waterways.

An article from 1954 reviews the history of the Port of Rochester, in an attempt to put into context the ports uses in preparation for the completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway.

https://www.libraryweb.org/~rochhist/v16_1954/v16i4.pdf

Basically, silt and sand bars formed by the flow of the Genesee River were a constant issue in use of the area as a shipping port, requiring continuous maintenance and improvement. Oswego proved a better location, and by far carried the bulk of trade on the US side of Lake Ontario throughout its history, especially after the opening of the Oswego Canal in 1929 that connected to the Erie. Rochester's port mainly served as an export location for coal barges (connected by railroads to the port), some larger bulk fright boats, and for passenger steamships to Toronto, Lewiston, and Montreal. It also has served recreational uses since the mid 1800s. There was some increase in export traffic prior to WW1, but never approaching traffic of other lake cities, especially due to physical limitations of only operating within Lake Ontario ports. Coal and some bulk cargo continued to be exported from the port until the early 1970s, until the last freight vessel left in 1974.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by eschaton

White flight is done in Detroit proper, but it's absolutely not done in the suburbs. There's always going to be another tranche of racist suburbanites upset their neighborhood has gotten to be X% black who look to move somewhere further out and whiter.

Right. It's a bit more complex than "racist suburbanites", but yeah, there's no doubt that whites are vacating a ton of inner suburbs, and the numbers understate the changes, since Middle Eastern populations are grouped with white.

For example, in Macomb County, the population churn clearly shows up in Warren, Eastpointe, Roseville, etc. as neighborhoods shift from white to black. In Wayne County you're not seeing it as clearly, but Livonia, Dearborn Heights and Garden City are undergoing similar changes, just from white to Arab.

And those new homebuyers in Macomb Township are coming from Southern Macomb, just like those new homebuyers in Lyon Township are coming from Western Wayne. If you ask why they moved its bc "the neighborhood changed".

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Right. It's a bit more complex than "racist suburbanites", but yeah, there's no doubt that whites are vacating a ton of inner suburbs, and the numbers understate the changes, since Middle Eastern populations are grouped with white.

For example, in Macomb County, the population churn clearly shows up in Warren, Eastpointe, Roseville, etc. as neighborhoods shift from white to black. In Wayne County you're not seeing it as clearly, but Livonia, Dearborn Heights and Garden City are undergoing similar changes, just from white to Arab.

And those new homebuyers in Macomb Township are coming from Southern Macomb, just like those new homebuyers in Lyon Township are coming from Western Wayne. If you ask why they moved its bc "the neighborhood changed".

Everyone has different definitions, but I tend to use the term racist to define systems of power, and bigoted to describe personal attitudes. Someone making a conscious decision to move from a mixed-race area to a whiter one may not personally be a bigot. They may, for example, sincerely believe the "schools are better." However, their decision ultimately results in the propping up of historically racist systems of housing segregation. What maters isn't what they believe in their heart of hearts, what matters is the practical impact.

I do think it's likely true that the presence of cheapish exurbs makes continued white flight more affordable. However, it's not like diversifying first-ring suburbs isn't something happening in the Northeast as well.

Interestingly, you don't really see this dynamic in the Southern U.S., where even exurbs tend to start out reasonably diverse in most areas. I believe the difference is because there's just less emphasis on public school systems in general, and they are often run by the counties, meaning there's some level of integration which is built into the system, making parental flight from one neighborhood to another less of a dynamic.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Its regional neighbors in the northeast corridor are also on track to follow suit, establishing consistent population growth over the past few decades.

of the other big 4 bos-wash cities outside of NYC, that really only applies to DC and boston.

philly is more in chicago's league, and baltimore is closer to cincy-style decline, and it even experienced more city proper decline last decade.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Right. It's a bit more complex than "racist suburbanites", but yeah, there's no doubt that whites are vacating a ton of inner suburbs, and the numbers understate the changes, since Middle Eastern populations are grouped with white.

For example, in Macomb County, the population churn clearly shows up in Warren, Eastpointe, Roseville, etc. as neighborhoods shift from white to black. In Wayne County you're not seeing it as clearly, but Livonia, Dearborn Heights and Garden City are undergoing similar changes, just from white to Arab.

And those new homebuyers in Macomb Township are coming from Southern Macomb, just like those new homebuyers in Lyon Township are coming from Western Wayne. If you ask why they moved its bc "the neighborhood changed".

Not quite sure I agree with this one. A lot of these new exurb communities are pretty diverse. In some cases they are more diverse than some major inner-ring Detroit suburbs.

• Canton (2010): 72.2% White, 10.2% African American, 0.2% Native American, 14.1% Asian
• Novi (2010): 73.0% White, 8.1% African American, 0.2% Native American, 15.9% Asian, 0.7% from other races, and 2.1% from two or more races

Compare that to some inner ringers:

• Livonia (2010): 92.0% White, 3.4% African American, 0.2% Native American, 2.5% Asian
• Royal Oak (2010): 90.7% White, 4.3% African American, 0.3% Native American, 2.4% Asian American

Now, there are some working class white inner-rings like Redford Township and Warren that have absorbed a lot of black flight from Detroit, but a lot of exurbs are pretty mixed too.

[3rd&Brown]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I do think it's likely true that the presence of cheapish exurbs makes continued white flight more affordable. However, it's not like diversifying first-ring suburbs isn't something happening in the Northeast as well.

Yeah, but there's nowhere left to go in the Northeast. In the case of Philadelphia, the (now) most outer ring exurbs in effect bounce up against the next city's suburbs. Go north/northeast -> Central New Jersey (a suburb of NYC) not cheap. Go due north to the outer limits of Bucks County, you bounce up against the south suburbs of Allentown and Bethlehem, which are the most posh suburbs of those smaller cities, so they're not cheap in their own right. Go due west you get into Chester County, which is already one of the richest counties in the country (i.e. not cheap) and after that you bump into the suburbs of Lancaster. Go south, you get into Delaware (state) and it has it's own hierarchy of suburbs and almost none of them is cheap. Also, Delaware is the Northeast's version of Georgia. Upwardly mobile, affluent, upper middle class black (the state is 28% black and increasing). The only pocket of sprawl that could be considered cheap would probably be far South Jersey but it's just so far and disconnected it doesn't make sense.

On top of that, every county has a tradition of "preserving" green space, so these are these massive programs to buy farms or privately owned parcels of land either outright or to place easements on them.

Thus, everything is just getting more dense and more inward.

Also. New construction neighborhoods where they do exist in the Philadelphia region are overwhelmingly minority, and specifically Asian (Indian and Chinese) so not sure where people would be "escaping" to.

I think the same can be said of NYC and DC. I know less about Boston.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by benp

An article from 1954 reviews the history of the Port of Rochester, in an attempt to put into context the ports uses in preparation for the completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway.

https://www.libraryweb.org/~rochhist/v16_1954/v16i4.pdf

Basically, silt and sand bars formed by the flow of the Genesee River were a constant issue in use of the area as a shipping port, requiring continuous maintenance and improvement. Oswego proved a better location, and by far carried the bulk of trade on the US side of Lake Ontario throughout its history, especially after the opening of the Oswego Canal in 1929 that connected to the Erie. Rochester's port mainly served as an export location for coal barges (connected by railroads to the port), some larger bulk fright boats, and for passenger steamships to Toronto, Lewiston, and Montreal. It also has served recreational uses since the mid 1800s. There was some increase in export traffic prior to WW1, but never approaching traffic of other lake cities, especially due to physical limitations of only operating within Lake Ontario ports. Coal and some bulk cargo continued to be exported from the port until the early 1970s, until the last freight vessel left in 1974.

awesome!

thanks for the history lesson.

sandy/silty sand-bar ridden river mouth ports have long been an issue in chicago as well, but i guess in rochester's case, the impetus to maintain a significant commercial lake port at the genesee river mouth just wasn't strong enough, and it was thus abandoned roughly 50 years ago.

it sounds like lake shipping never was a terribly significant part of the city's bread and butter, unlike all of the other large cities on the lakes.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Not quite sure I agree with this one. A lot of these new exurb communities are pretty diverse. In some cases they are more diverse than some major inner-ring Detroit suburbs.

I think it's complex, and both narratives can be true. There's white flight from inner suburbs, often even into diverse outer suburbs.

The upscale northwestern suburbs are heavily Asian. Novi Schools are majority Asian. Meanwhile Livonia schools are like 80% white. But whites are moving out of Livonia and into outer suburbs. Livonia is becoming more downscale, and more Middle Eastern. Their new sprawly McMansion neighborhood might have growing numbers of East and South Asian doctors and engineers, but that doesn't appear to be an issue. Livonia has changed, and will be a Dearborn in a generation, but the Census "white" masks the transition.

Also, I don't think white flighters are moving to Novi anymore. Too Asian and expensive. They're headed to South Lyon area, which is still 90%+ white. Though South Lyon will (probably) be the next Novi.

There's race, and there's class, and there are different values attached to different groups. And I don't think most people are overtly bigoted but react to certain cues of what they perceive as positive/negative demographic change.

Royal Oak is in the Woodward corridor, and remains very white. There's almost no diversity along the Woodward corridor. No Asians, blacks, Latinos, Arab, nothing.

Gonna stereotype here, but high-income immigrant groups don't value older homes and downtowns like whites. They want McMansions and top performing schools. I see that everywhere, not just in Metro Detroit. Go to an older railroad suburb in the Northeast, and it's probably white. Go to a sprawly McMansion area and it's probably pretty Asian.

[3rd&Brown]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Gonna stereotype here, but high-income immigrant groups don't value older homes and downtowns like whites. They want McMansions and top performing schools. I see that everywhere, not just in Metro Detroit. Go to an older railroad suburb in the Northeast, and it's probably white. Go to a sprawly McMansion area and it's probably pretty Asian.

This is very true in the Philadelphia region. At least on the PA side. Many new subdivisions where they do exist (there aren't many) are more than 50% Asian. I live in a new development in Philadelphia proper (900 new (town)homes on a former industrial site) within spitting distance of downtown and my neighborhood thus far (200 homes into settlement) is 75-80% Asian. I say that to validate the new shiny home theory, not the schools, as it doesn't really apply to my current situation though it most certainly does for the suburbs.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

of the other big 4 bos-wash cities outside of NYC, that really only applies to DC and boston.

philly is more in chicago's league, and baltimore is closer to cincy-style decline, and it even experienced more city proper decline last decade.

Philadelphia and Washington actually returned to growth during the same decade. Washington just had stronger growth, likely tied to regional performance. Chicago has as many growth decades as Philly and Washington, but it has yet to post two consecutive decades of growth. I can see the argument for bucketing Chicago in the Philly and Washington tier, but I think it's in the lower part of that tier and performance this decade will tell the bigger picture.

I suspect that Baltimore is about a decade away from returning to growth in a Philly/Washington pattern.

1950 - 1960 growth rate

1. Boston: -13%
2. Detroit: -9.7%
3. Washington: -4.8%
4. Philadelphia: -3.3%
5. NYC: -1.4%
6. Baltimore: -1.1%
7. Chicago: -1.9%

1960 - 1970

1. Detroit: -9.3%
2. Boston: -8.7%
3. Chicago: -5.2%
4. Baltimore: -3.5%
5. Philadelphia: -2.7%
6. Washington: -1.0%
7. NYC: +1.5%

1970 - 1980

1. Detroit: -20.5%
2. Washington: -15.6%
3. Philadelphia: -13.4%
4. Baltimore: -13.1%
5. Boston: -12.2%
6. Chicago: -10.7%
7. NYC: -10.4%

1980 - 1990

1. Detroit: -14.6%
2. Chicago: -7.4%
3. Baltimore: -6.4%
4. Philadelphia: -6.1%
5. Washington: -4.9%
6. Boston: +2.0%
7. NYC: +3.5%

1990 - 2000

1. Baltimore: -11.5%
2. Detroit: -7.5%
3. Washington: -5.7%
4. Philadelphia: -4.3%
5. Boston: +2.6%
6. Chicago: +4%
7. NYC: +9.4%

2000 - 2010

1. Detroit: -25%
2. Chicago: -6.9%
3. Baltimore: -4.6%
4. Philadelphia: +0.6%
5. Washington: +5.2%
6. NYC: +2.1%
7. Boston: +4.8%

2010 - 2020

1. Detroit: -10.5%
2. Baltimore: -5.7%
3. Chicago: +1.9%
4. Philadelphia: +5.1%
5. NYC: +7.7%
6. Boston: +9.4%
7. Washington: +14.6%

Growth decades since 1950:

1. NYC: 5
2. Boston: 4
3. Chicago: 2
4. Philadelphia: 2
5. Washington: 2
6. Baltimore: 0
7. Detroit: 0

Average growth rate 1950:

1. NYC: +2.17%
2. Washington: -1.74%
3. Boston: -2.15%
4. Philadelphia: -3.44%
5. Chicago: -3.74%
6. Baltimore: -6.55%
7. Detroit: -13.87%